Issue #36

Welcome yet again to another Issue of Flip Weekly. Before you check out what I was able to pick up this week, I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has subscribed, we’ve recently surpassed 2,000 subscribers which is huge. Flip Weekly was born only in February of this year so the growth has been amazing. I’m looking forward to keeping this going as long as I can and it still surprises me that so many people want to read the ramblings of a garage sale mad man each Thursday morning.

In This Issue

• What I’ve Bought

• What I Sold

• Win a Free $200 Mystery Box

• Flip Weekly on Social Media

• 100% Free Resources to Help You

What I’ve Bought

On Saturday morning I was ready for some bargains - I had $80 in cash and 7 garage sales mapped out. As always, I had planned my route according to expectations with the first stop being my best guess as to the most likely chance of finding items to resell for a profit. You can imagine my state of mind when I left without picking up a single item. Don’t get me wrong, there was money to be made, but I’m not too keen on turning $5 into $10 unless it’s something unique.

Things didn’t get better at the 2nd or 3rd sale, I struck out and left with only admiration (and a bit of jealously) of the affluent suburb I had ended up in which had picturesque views of Sydney Harbor, perfectly manicured yards and super cars parked on the street which made me feel completely out of place.

Fortunately, I was a bit luckier at the 4th. It was around an hour since they first opened so they had been picked over multiple times but I was able to find a couple of cool items and made a pile. I didn’t snap a pic at the time but here’s an animated GIF of what I got for $60.

We have 5 items with an individual cost price of $12 - pretty high for a garage sale. Here’s what they are and what they’ve listed for:

I’ll quickly run through the items for you. The Transformers figure was complete, had the box and it looked like something that would have originally cost $100. As it was from 2011 I figured it might be a rare piece so it’s worth buying for $20. It was a good pickup - on Amazon it’s $360 brand new and eBay it’s $190 brand new. I should be able to get at least half of that.

After that was Zelda Monopoly. The seller had a lot of board games and this one was left behind and when I opened the lid I could see that the pieces were still sealed, all the other games were opened. I love the collaboration between Zelda and Monopoly from a resellers perspective and if it was brand new (still fully sealed) it’s $150 - $200. Again, I should hopefully be able to get half of that. My recommendation is to keep an eye out for sealed Monopoly however they’re not all built the same. I saw a sealed Eternals (Marvel) Monopoly at Savers for $5 and thought it would do well, but comps on eBay have it starting from $10 brand new. Keep an eye out but don’t purchase blind.

Next was the rechargeable Coleman camping lamp. I don’t buy much camping equipment but what I have bought in the past has sold quickly. This thing was still in the box and it was well made with a rechargeable battery and if you’ve ever manufactured a product before you’ll know that batteries aren’t cheap. It’s not the newest model so I couldn’t find exact comps but I think I should be able to get at least $50 for it. I’ve listed it on Marketplace for now hoping for a quick sale.

I almost missed these, we have 4 Star Wars cup toppers that were hiding at the bottom underneath the tables at the sale. This is one of those items were they’re undervalued because they’re technically bits of plastic that go on top of cups, but the real value lays in the collectible nature of them. On eBay we have individual toppers going for $15-$20 so I think $60 for all 4 is a good deal.

Finally it’s the 1997 Manchester United scarf that’s brand new. I put this in my pile thinking it would get lost in the mix and I’d basically get it for free. As it’s from 1997 I didn’t know if it was going to be desirable or rare or whatever, but either way I thought if I got charged $5 for it, it should be able to sell for at least $20. Not ideal but garage sale piles can grow quickly.

We’re $60 in the hole and I’m not feeling the best about my buys and we only have $20 left and 2 sales to go. I visit the next one and it’s all junk. Sorry, I mean… not something I’d buy. I take a look at Google Maps just to see where I am. I map the distance to home and then the distance from the next sale to home. I’m low on cash and energy and I’m thinking of just calling it quits. The sale is basically on the way back, maybe a 5 minute detour, so FOMO kicks in and I decide to swing by. It must be around 10:30am so I’m not expecting much. I was wrong, the last stop turns out to be the best.

It’s time to test your knowledge. You know that we have $20 left in the wallet. Take a look at the next 2 photos that have 8 pieces of electronics with varying prices. We can’t get them all and we’re not looking up prices at a garage sale.

Ignore the stickers on the furniture. We have a $20 note and that’s all. I’m going to describe what the 8 pieces are just from the photos (not full specs with Google Lens) and your job is to pick the best possible combination to maximise profit.

So what’s your combination? Before I tell you what mine was, I really want you to analyse the photos and with a make believe $20 note, think of what you would have picked up before scrolling down. Here’s where the value lays:

Alright, so first for $10 you should have picked up the Panasonic VHS / DVD combo. It has sold comps over the $200 mark. It’s a no brainer when it has all of the cables and the remote. Next is the Sony radio that has the CD player and remote. Most radios don’t have a remote nor a CD player so this stood out to me for $5. That’s a total of $15 so far, we have $5 left. The next decision was a crap shoot and as you can see from the prices above, they were very close together. I picked up the Panasonic radio. Why? The Sony Cube radios I’ve seen a million times and they don’t seem to be worth much - I just checked and they have a 25% sell through rate so if you find ‘em for like $1, sure.. I didn’t recognise X-Dragon nor Aramco and that left the Panasonic radio which was both battery powered and AC powered. The only other item was the Sony Dream Machine Alarm Clock and to me it looked old, but not in a good way. Like an outdated old. I left it behind.

The final pick up for $20 was the VHS / DVD combo, the Sony CD Player and the Panasonic Portable Radio. The total listed value for those 3 was $369.85 which was one of the best combinations you could get.

Now on the way out I noticed this.

I checked the coin section of my wallet and I saw that I had a $2 coin. Perfect, I bought both. I’ve never found a Dyson in the wild before nor have I ever bought Dyson accessories at a garage sale before however after buying a Dyson V6 and a Dyson Hot+Cool fan in the past, I knew this stuff was very expensive so there may be money in accessories. I was right.

I have a love / hate relationship with garage sales. 80% of the ones I attend have me screaming “JUNK!“ in the car. The remaining 20% make me a lot of money and give me things to write about. It’s purely a numbers game and I honestly think that it’s an amazing way to make a bit of money as a side hustle.

Note: just to remind you, I primarily aim to turn $10 into $100+ so there’s a lot of items I pass on that everyone can make money on.

Moving on from garage sales on Saturday, I spent the Sunday with family and decided to stop in at Savers on the way home. It was only a quick visit before they shut at 6pm but I did find these 2 unusual plushies.

The one on the left has no exact comps but it’s Mashimaro who is a South Korean fictional character from an old school flash game. He had a $10.99 Savers price tag over his original tag. Plain versions of this character have sold comps as high as $60 and active comps over $200 with plenty of watchers. I honestly have no idea what to list him for but given he was $10.99 I landed on $79.99 with best offers turned on. He could be totally rare and worth hundreds or he could be unwanted - we’ll find out.

The other guy had a tag which said Riot Games 2022 and he’s from League of Legends, some online game. His name is Baron Nashor and he has exact comps from the Riot Games website and if he was to be shipped to Australia it would cost over $150. I listed for $49.99 with free shipping which I think is fair (1500% markup?!) considering he was $2.99 at Savers.

Next, are you looking for a sign to pay attention to the CD section of thrift stores? Are you constantly walking past them without a second thought? Let me show you something.

This is a really cool item from the BBC. It’s from 2003 and it’s the audiobook of The Lord of the Rings and contains 13 CD’s within this ring container. I have a soft spot for The Lord of the Rings, I grew up with the movies and it sparked my love for New Zealand. I’ve visited the country on many occasions, have had my Queenstown photographs turned into original oil paintings and plan to (hopefully) retire there one day.

There aren’t that many sold comps available, it seems quite rare but there are active comps and they’re at the $100 mark. The first one I saw was this:

I decided to list on Marketplace for $50 in the hopes of a really quick sale and eBay for $100 with free post. Lord of the Rings stuff usually sells quite quickly for me so I’m going to guess it’ll be sold before Sunday. Hold me to that.

What I Sold

In last weeks Issue of Flip Weekly I picked up this vintage gas lighter at an estate sale for just $10. There were signs it was from the 80’s and I listed it up without any exact comps for $79.95. It’s gone on to sell for full price just 5 days later. If you missed last weeks issue I’d recommend going back and checking it out just to see my horrible predictions with the 200 matchbooks I picked up from the same sale.

Care Bears is a huge category and something you need to keep an eye out for, even if they’re not brand new in the box like this beauty. In Issue #31 I found him at a thrift store with a $15 price tag. US based comps ranged from $80 to $114 so I listed him for sale on eBay for $124.95 and Marketplace for $100. The numbers were encouraing with plenty of views, saves, watchers and shares and after just over a month he’s sold in person for $100 cash.

This Transformers figure was bought for $12 at this weeks garage sales and sold the very next morning for full price, $50. The sale was via Facebook Marketplace and I didn’t bother listing on eBay just because I didn’t know what to do with the box. It was very tatty and the cost of shipping it in the box would be high. In the end the person that bought it took the box and all. For reference, I spent $60 at the garage sale this came from which included 5 items and I’ve just gotten paid $50 for 1. Basically I made my money back within 24 hours.

Baron Nashor lasted less than 24 hours. Bought for $2.99 and sold for $49.95 I’d say it was a good buy. I hear a lot of people say they’re not doing plush but I’m not sure why… take a read through Flip Weekly and you can see so many examples just like this. Skip over the generic stuff and look for the weird and you can usually make some money; in fact just thinking about every time I’ve gone to Savers I’ve left with a plush. Just think, if you buy a video game for $5 and sell it for $50, or you buy a book for $10 and sell it for $50, those returns are 900% and 400% respectively - considerably less than the plush. I say why not?

This looks familiar because it was just in this Issue that I bought the Panasonic DVD / VHS combo - you should have too with your make believe $20 note. This thing cost $10 on Saturday and sold on Wednesday night for $199.95. When it comes to the love/hate relationship, this is the part I love.

A few other items I sold this week:

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100% Free Resources to Help You

Flip Weekly have created the following resources to help you become a better reseller.

• Ultimate List of YouTube Reseller Channels

• Google Sheets Reseller Spreadsheet

• Memorize Video Game Prices with Flip Vidya

• eBay Sell Through Rate Calculator